The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai, 2013)

[albucat]

No, can you link to it?

[hearthesilence]

Here ya go.

[albucat]

That was amazing, thanks.

[Zot!]

Doyle has been a self-confessed drunken lunatic for quite a while now. I have no idea what Away With Words was supposed to be about, probably nothing, but the dude is a genius DP, and I enjoy his caustic personality. I want to order this BD, but Blueberry Nights is so horrible that it's really making it hard for me to trust WKW again. Still this extended version would probably cost less than a night at the cinema to see the cut version, and I wouldn't have to give the Weinsteins any money.

[zedz]

I just hope Criterion gets onto That Day, at the Beach before Doyle drinks himself into oblivion. I'd love to hear what he has to say about working on that film.

[Adam X]

The Australian & UK DVD's of Shinji Imaoka's Underwater Love feature a great collection of on-camera interviews with Doyle that give an interesting look at at his current working methods and ideas.

[R0lf]

I know it is unlikely but I hope when they say this was re edited for wider distribution that they have completely removed the three second cuts that run the entire movie length and instead used longer takes for each scene. I found scene after scene being robbed of any gravitas due to the constant jump cutting.

[zedz]

I received the HK BluRay of this today, and there's a little sticker on the front saying "New Music & Sound Effect Version", so it looks like we've got (at least) a third version of the movie out in the wild.

[Forrest Taft]

Received it today and I was surprised seeing that sticker too. Does anyone know if the Morricone music was in the original cut? That was the piece that stuck out to me (but it's one my favourite Morricone cues, so no complaints!).

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Morricone piece was always there. Actually there are two: "La donna romantica" and "Deborah's Theme." The theatrical version used very different recordings for these pieces--if you check the credits on the BD, it indicates they're new performances ("Courtesy of Block 2 Music"), so presumably the theatrical mix used existing versions because the new ones weren't done on time. At least I assume they're existing versions, since the original theatrical credits make no mention whatsoever of the non-original music.

[tenia]

At least I assume they're existing versions, since the original theatrical credits make no mention whatsoever of the non-original music.

In France, I do remember quite clearly that the 2 Morricone track's are clearly stated in the credits, though I don't remember what is stated in their details.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I meant the Chinese theatrical version. The international version probably reflects whatever audio changes were made for the BD, though it's a different cut.

[manicsounds]

If anyone wants to know about Ip Man's life and work, I'd recommend Wilson Yip's "Ip Man" film more than "The Grandmaster". Not to say it's a bad movie, it's actually a great movie.

"The Grandmaster" is definitely a Wong Kar Wai film, and structurally would be very frustrating for people looking for a definitive story of Ip Man. The trademarks of Wong, the non-linear structure, stuttering slow-mo, are all there, which is no surprise for WKW fans. For people who've never watched a WKW movie and then watched "The Grandmaster", I don't really think it will make them search out for the rest of his filmography sadly.

[colinr0380]

Having just watched the Mei Ah Blu-ray, I think that The Grandmaster just might be Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece. It is definitely his most mature work along with In The Mood For Love. Perhaps even slightly more mature than In The Mood For Love as the characters there only play at the possibility of love while here Gong Er and Ip Man acknowledge their love. (There also feel like allusions to 2046’s single narrator telling the tales of others; In The Mood For Love’s walk down evening streets, visits to shrines and use of grainy colour archival film footage at key points of the film. Even the much maligned My Blueberry Nights fits in with the idea in The Grandmaster of inevitably having to take on the mantle/burden of responsibility for your actions from your various mentors)

The intimate epic scale of the drama also plays into this too with the move from almost adolescently exuberant bloodless and extravagant Matrix-esque fight scenes (particularly the pre-credits rain one which is very reminiscent of the final showdown in Matrix Revolutions) through the fight scene with the ‘dark shadow’ figure of the film The Razor which is much more violent, with blood mingling with the rain, through to Gong Er’s showdown with her nemesis Ma San, at which point the epic battles fall away and we are left with a bittersweet tale of family duty, unrequited love in the face of personal and political divisions and the importance of a philosophy by which to live your life.

The whole film feels very tactile, full of almost touchable surfaces (who needs 3D when it often feels as if Ziyi Zhang's fist is going to come right out of the screen and punch me even in a 2D print!) and interestingly contrasting textures (from the smouldering of tobacco to the smouldering of hair, or the grain of a wooden chair, the opulent gilding of the brothel, or the temple, the wet back streets, and so on) and there are frequent, stunning moments of extreme almost Argento-esque hyper-close ups of splintering wood, unravelling fabric or even small particles of dirt or snow shuddering under the force of various impacts. In terms of the fights, I thought that these were beautiful, especially the one on the train platform between Ma San and Gong Er. That entire scene felt like a tribute to the opening of Once Upon A Time In The West, as Gong Er waits for the train carrying her target to arrive in the station, although the style is pure Wong Kar-Wai as time distorts and elongates as characters reminisce (rather than wait out what turn out to be the final moments of their lives in the Leone film) until the train eventually barrels out of the fog into the platform belching smoke like a dragon.

While we are on the subject, the final sequence with Gong Er also reminded me very heavily of the final shot of De Niro in Once Upon A Time In America. Which made it particularly exciting to read in the end credits of the film, though the piece had not rung any bells with me during the film itself, that Deborah’s Theme from Once Upon A Time In America is used on the soundtrack, which would seem to suggest that seeing a couple of sequences as Leone-influenced might not be so far off the mark! (EDIT: Ah, I see on reading back through the thread that the Morricone track was mentioned above and Finch had gotten a Once Upon A Time In The West sense too! I don't feel quite so crazily free-associative now!)

I particularly liked the way that the Wing Chun was used in a similar manner to the way that In The Mood For Love and 2046 used writing. In a way the essential nobility and grace of kung fu on display by the main character here acts as a pointed contrast to the living too much in his own head, used to fabricating fantastical stories and therefore finding it easier to detach from womanising and using other real people, lead of 2046 in particular (perhaps the film is also slightly meant to play a little like one of Mr Chow's pulp martial arts stories, full of archetypal characters and dualistic conflicts). Writing pulp fiction can sublimate desires but there is also the sense that it is also allowing the character to ignore essential truths of their lives and behaviour through escaping into fiction, whereas the Wing Chun philosophy on display in The Grandmaster acts as a guiding force for both the main character and the entire community of people who are surrounding him.

Also in a sense that philosophy provides some consolation in the face of the personal, familial and romantic losses that Ip Man faces – even though I found the ending as emotionally devastating as In The Mood For Love’s it was on a more abstract, yet wider, level. Strangely it wasn’t the romantic ending or the sacrifice that started my tears, it was the scene just after as Ip Man is training the next generation of students and having his picture taken with his class (along with the brutal intertitles bluntly jumping years or describing characters fates matter of factly, another beautiful use of, and comment on, the ceaseless, indifferent nature of time to match the "100 hours...1,000 hours...10,000 hours" intertitles in 2046 as a character slowly feels emotions long after the fact). The motif of gathering for a picture is a repeated symbol throughout the film and knowing that it was another transient moment captured, with Ip Man in the frame but the people around him changing, moving on or disappearing through the years (people in different guises or uniforms but all gathering for a commemorative photo to mark the occasion) and his own sense of aging, led an overwhelming sense of melancholy but also a strange sense of peace and contentment in leaving the character at the end of the major upheavals in his life after having been through the trials of responsibility and seen as a figure to be challenged and bested by all comers, and the beginning of a new phase as a mentor himself. Hard won experience and wisdom surrounded by naïve, youthful, energetic, no regrets (yet) idealism of his students.

[Fred Holywell]

The Grandmaster is coming to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts on August 15. It's part of a Wong Kar-wai film series running throughout the month.

The Grandmaster by Wong Kar-wai (Hong Kong, 2013, 129 min.).
See one of the year’s most anticipated films before its Boston release!
Thursday, August 15, 2013
8:00 pm - 10:10 pm
Alfond Auditorium

[hearthesilence]

MoMI in Queens, NY is showing it too, as part of their complete Wong Kar-Wai retrospective. Wong will also be there for the Grandmasters screening, but it's museum members only.

[colinr0380]

One thing that I forgot to note in my review of the film above is that Tony Leung does a fantastic cocky smirk at a couple of points during his scenes as a younger man! Very amusing, but also a great contrast to later on when he has matured somewhat.

[zedz]

Looks like the original release plans for this (holding back the North American premiere for Toronto) have backfired. That's the problem when you sit on something too long: people forget about it and newer baubles distract everybody's attention.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I don't think they ever intended to hold it back for Toronto, or if they did they've long since abandoned that plan--the U.S. release date was set as August 23rd (two weeks before TIFF) all the way back in April. The Comic-Con screening on the 20th (with Wong in attendance) was the film's North American premiere, which seems a bit incongruous for a Wong Kar-wai film, but they're obviously banking on an arthouse/kung-fu crossover audience and decided a belated TIFF showing wouldn't contribute much to that.

Incidentally, TWC have changed the title back to The Grandmaster, marking the fourth time the English title has been changed by someone or the other (The Grand Master -> The Grandmasters -> The Grandmaster -> Grandmasters -> The Grandmaster).

[AlexHansen]

Glenn Kenny on Twitter: "Looking at HK BR of GRANDMASTER. The US cut is a radical restructure emphasizing unrequited love over martial arts history. Both valid." "Also worth noting: there's material in the US cut of GRANDMASTER that's not in the 130min HK version. Demand the 4 hour cut as US BR extra!."

[criterion10]

Now, the real question is: Which version is better to watch first?

Obviously, the correct answer is whichever version Wong Kar-Wai prefers, but does he even have a preference?

[albucat]

It's like The New World, in that there's a whole pile of radically different and I don't know where to start.

[warren oates]

Thanks for the heads-up, Alex. I wasn't even going to bother with the U.S. theatrical release... Harvey Scissorhands and all, plus those ten minutes confirmed cut by WKW himself. But I haven't watched the HK Blu-ray yet. And this is only good news as far as I'm concerned. A different equally valid cut. I'm going to catch the U.S. theatrical first, then follow it up with the HK Blu-ray.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

So according to this, the U.S. version is 108 minutes, or about 15 minutes shorter than the shortest previous cut (the "international" version shown at Berlin and released in France, Japan, and basically everywhere else it didn't open in January). The writer apparently hasn't seen any other version, so there's no clear indications of what's missing, but it sounds like Chang Chen's already bare-bones role has been reduced further--even though he has a scene in this cut not present in the Chinese version--and poor Zhao Benshan (who already lost one of his two scenes for the international cut) might be gone altogether, since he's not mentioned at all. I'm most baffled by the claim that the film "makes much of its hero's anti-Japanese nationalism," since Yip shows no such trait in the Chinese version and it would be extremely odd to add this for a foreign version.

As for the four-hour cut Kenny mentions in his tweet, that seems to be mythical. There were lots of reports that Wong had mentioned it during the Chinese publicity tour, but somebody later asked him about it point-blank and his response was "What four-hour version? I never said anything about a four-hour version." Assuming the original reports weren't just made up from whole cloth, my guess is he was referring to either a rough assemblage or speaking hypothetically, as in "I could have made a four-hour cut" (which is probably true for most of his films).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

WKW talks to the NYT.